


Charlie and Mac: Ghost Hunters

by Benthic



Category: Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Best Friends, Friendship, Gen, Humor, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 20:37:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benthic/pseuds/Benthic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something's been keeping Charlie up at night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Charlie and Mac: Ghost Hunters

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nokomis](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Nokomis).



> It's a long series, and while I've done the best I can to avoid tiny continuity errors, I was unable to review every episode, which means there's a distinct chance that we're told at some point in canon exactly what time Paddy's Pub opens on a Friday or that there are no pipes in Frank and Charlie's apartment. For any dumb little mistakes like that, I ask your forgiveness. The rest of the research is, as far as I know, accurate; the movies, books, television shows, and bizarre snippets of celebrity gossip referenced herein are all real. The characters, of course, aren't mine, and no infringement is intended.

**10:30 AM, on a Friday. Philadelphia, PA.**

  
Frank washed the morning-taste of stale beer out of his mouth with a swig of fresh beer and scoffed at Charlie, who really looked like he could use a drink himself. No one deserved to be that on edge that early in the morning. Frank made him wait anyway, savored the mouthful before finally addressing him. "I'm telling you, it's those goddamned cats again. Aren't you used to this by now?"  
"Oh, _sure!_ It's just the _cats,_ Frank! Calling my name in the middle of the night! You know, the fact that you can't hear what's going on is all the more reason—"  
"It's a meow, Charlie! It's some cat in heat, going—_chhhwaaaarrrrrlllyyy—_"  
"That doesn't even sound like a cat!" It was true; Frank's impression reminded Charlie a lot more of his own mother on a bad day than a cat's yowl. Charlie _knew_ cats, and whatever was keeping him awake at night was no cat. He was drunk enough on lack of sleep to have broken two wine glasses that morning alone, while Frank seemed well-rested, gesturing with his beer with an easy elegance designed not to spill a drop. What did he know about cats, anyway? "What do you know about cats, anyway?"  
"Ever since you saw that stupid movie—"  
And it would have gone on that way, as it had all week, if Dennis hadn't finally gotten curious and interrupted them. Their single customer that morning had already complained about the broken glass on the floor and didn't seem willing to take "just kick it under the table" for an answer. Charlie Work, Dennis thought, and his own fault besides. Why did the guy bother to complain about what he had to do around the bar? He broke glasses, used the toilets, and occasionally vomited on the floor just like everyone else who worked there.  
"Hey, heeeey, fellas!" Dennis put on his most soothing voice, resting a hand on Charlie's shoulder. "What's going on here? Charlie, you look like shit. Go clean up that glass." The hand on Charlie's shoulder patted him and then tightened, nudging him off of his bar stool, making room for Dennis to take his place. "Frank? What's the deal with Charlie?"  
"_Paranormal activity,_ Dennis!" Charlie threw over his shoulder before stumbling off to find the broom.  
"Now that movie, that was a waste of time. They could have done so much more with the camera, the angles, the couple in bed—huge disappointment, if you ask me." He addressed Frank, tuning out Charlie's grumbling and the predictable "Ow!" as Charlie dealt with the glass. "His own fault," Dennis added, as an afterthought. Frank nodded and polished off his beer, smacking his lips.  
"I was bored as shit through the whole thing! Where do they get off making me sit through an hour and a half of garbage, and then you don't even get to see anything good?"  
Charlie reappeared with one hand dressed in an Egg McMuffin wrapper, the remnants of that morning's breakfast. Dennis waved him away in disgust. "Dude, we have paper towels in the bathroom."  
"I'm not talking about the movie! Just because the movie was called _Paranormal Activity_ and was about paranormal activity—"  
Frank interrupted him. "And you saw it the night before all this 'paranormal activity' started? Don't forget that part."  
"Yes," Charlie said, face darkening, "as a matter of fact, I did, and I still don't see why you keep bringing that up or what it has to do with the _ghost_ in our _apartment_ that is _keeping me awake at night!_"  
"You see?" Frank turned to Dennis, exasperated. "You see what I've been dealing with all week? He jumps at every little thing, he thinks the cats in the alley outside the apartment can talk—"  
"Something is communicating with me, Frank, and it's not the cats this time!"  
"You're completely out of your—"  
"_Guys!_"  
Frank and Charlie stopped their bickering and looked up at Dennis, as did their single customer, distracted from nudging at a shard of glass with the toe of his boot. Dennis lowered his voice and continued, with a placating little gesture, before Charlie could open his mouth again. "Let's think about this rationally, mmkay? First of all, I mean, _clearly,_ Charlie is out of his mind."  
"Goddammit, Dennis, I—"  
Dennis waved his hand again, flapping his fingers, calling for silence. "_On the other hand_—as long as we're thinking about this rationally, Charlie, Frank, we have to take into account the very real possibility that someone has passed on in your apartment at some time in the past."  
"You think so?"  
"I told you!" Charlie sounded more relieved than disturbed.  
"Well, come on, think about it. A shithole like that? Mac—hey, Mac! You stayed there for a while."  
Mac had been preoccupied all morning with the ceiling of Paddy's. Every inch of it had been subjected to his scrutiny, every little nook and recess met with an approving nod or a quizzical shake of the head. _What the hell is he doing?_ Dennis wondered. Mac backed towards them for a few steps, eyes fixed on some apparently satisfying corner of the room, and then finally turned and headed over to the bar. He looked pleased with himself for some private reason. "What's up?"  
"Mac, you spent a night or two with Frank and Charlie. What do you think the chances are that someone's died in their apartment in some tragic, ghost-creating kind of way?"  
"Oh, one hundred percent." Mac nodded, his head bouncing emphatically.  
"A hundred percent?"  
"Dude, I wanted to kill myself just sleeping in that place. I lay awake thinking of ways to do it. Things lying around the apartment I could use, of which, I might add, there are many—"  
"Frank's tried it before," Charlie cut in, the unperturbed Frank nodding his agreement. "There's this pipe that comes out of the ceiling, and this one wire, and this one sharp edge on the window that would be perfect for killing yourself—"  
Mac laughed. "You know, I saw that, and I seriously thought about that one? Great minds!" He reached over to smack Frank on the back amicably. "And that's just if you're trying, which just about anyone would after a week in _that_ shithole. There are countless other ways to get killed in a place like that without even seeking the sweet release of death yourself. You guys looking for some sort of security?" He puffed up again with a kind of quiet pride; Mac was evidently in a good mood.  
"No, Mac."  
They waited. Charlie leaned on the bar, his attitude dramatic with a touch of smugness, and sucked in a long breath to draw out the suspense. The pub's lone customer was smoking nearby, and the ghost of a cough hovered over Charlie's words, but he rallied.  
"We're looking for an _exorcist._"  


**x x x**

  
"Where'd Charlie and Frank go? Shit, this place _is_ awful."  
Mac looked up as Dennis picked his way into Charlie and Frank's apartment, around a garbage bag, the garbage that had spilled out of the bag, the garbage that had never made its way into the bag, and an uncapped two-liter bottle of Mountain Dew half-filled with something foul. His nose automatically curled in disgust when the leg of Dennis's pants brushed the bottle. He could feel his brain bracing itself for the smell that would follow if the bottle were knocked over, a kind of unfortunate muscle memory it had taken him all of an hour to develop when he'd been sleeping here. "Watch out for the cupcake wrapper," he said. Dennis's feet weren't visible from this angle, but Mac knew the wrapper would be there; why would it have been thrown out? It had lived there for months.  
Dennis jerked his foot up before it could touch the floor, grimacing, and Mac gave him a knowing smile before continuing. "One of the cameras needed a new battery, so they went out to pick it up. They left the setting up to me. I mean, I _do_ have plenty of experience."  
"Wait, wait—you're setting it up right here? This is all wrong, bro! We're not going to get any interesting shots with this angle! This is amateur, stale, security camera stuff! Now, if you want to know how to get a good shot of two people in bed—I'm your guy."  
"Well, yeah, but we're just filming the apartment overnight to see if anything unusual shows up, right? A security camera angle is exactly what we need."  
"Did you see _Paranormal Activity_?"  
Mac shook his head. He'd wanted to, but Dennis had gone with a girl he'd been trying to bang, and then he'd refused to go again. What fun would it have been with anyone but Dennis? _He knows that,_ Mac thought, his mood souring slightly. Dennis kept talking.  
"Of course you didn't, because I'm never sitting through it again, because it was _completely_ boring. There's one static shot of the bed. Do you expect me to sit through hours more of that when we go through this footage? The only reason I sat through it the first time was because the main characters of that movie might have started banging at any time, which I should pray is not an option here." Dennis laughed, a sharp, humorless bark. "If we're doing this anyway, we want to do it right the first time. Say they're actually haunted and we show this footage to the world. Do we really want to show them your amateur camera work?"  
"Dennis, people aren't going to be interested in your porno angles with the, the legs and the feet and the balls! This is an investigation! We need to do a full sweep of the room, keep everything straightforward so the footage can speak for itself. Having installed the Paddy's security cameras, I think I have the experience—"  
Looking blank, Dennis held up a hand to silence him. He thought for a long moment before speaking. "Uh, Mac? Paddy's doesn't _have_ security cameras. Frank didn't want to spring for new ones, remember? 'Like anyone would steal any of our shit anyway'? Remember that?"  
"We don't have _real_ security cameras, no. But see, this is where my expertise comes in. Sometimes the threat of a security camera is enough, wouldn't you agree?"  
"Sure, sure. Go on."  
"_That's_ why I talked Frank into buying fake cameras. Six bucks each, bro, and they're as good as the real thing! They don't film anything, but come on, who actually watches security camera footage anyway? It's the threat of the camera that works the magic!"  
Dennis tapped his chin thoughtfully, clicking his tongue, considering. When he nodded his approval, Mac beamed. _I knew he'd like it._  
"All right, that's a good point. But you haven't set them up yet, have you? I haven't noticed any cameras in Paddy's. So my original point, which was that you do not in fact have the experience you claim to have when it comes to camera work, still stands."  
That was when Mac knew he'd won, and his smile stretched his face. His good mood was back. "Ah, you see! That's where you're wrong. I _have_ set up the cameras. _Hidden_ cameras. What better way to catch troublemakers than a hidden camera? They don't know it's there, they start something, and _bam!_ We've got 'em! See, the fact that you never knew I'd installed them perfectly illustrates my expertise at camera placement and the maximization of camera functionality."  
His cheeks burned with his grin.  
"You installed fake, hidden cameras," Dennis said flatly. It wasn't a question.  
"You got it."  
"What the hell is wrong with you? The whole point of the fake camera is that they see it and get scared off without us having to pay for the real camera! If no one can see it, no one gets scared off! If they don't know the hidden camera is there, it's not a deterrent! Now, if it's a real hidden camera, you've got the footage to go over, but with the fake camera, as you've _already_ forgotten despite explaining it to me two seconds ago, there _is no footage!_"  
He sounded like he might have gone on if he hadn't run out of breath. When he did, Mac cut in, the expression on his face freezing and then falling and then tightening by inches. "That's not—you're completely missing the point, which is that if you want to scare the ghosts away with your _highly visible porno cameras,_ then maybe we should just—"  
"Well-a _good eeeeevening,_ bitches!"  
Charlie's own mood had lightened in the past twelve hours. He danced into the apartment, wobbling a bit, followed by Frank, who made no move to steady him. Mac watched as Charlie's foot came down onto the floor where the cupcake wrapper lived; sure enough, when he made his way around the table and over to Mac and Dennis, it was stuck to the bottom of his shoe. _Shouldn't he have known that was there by now?_  
"He is tripping balls," Dennis murmured, and Mac only nodded, his irritation forgotten for the moment.  
"Two bottles," said Frank. He was rustling through the bag he'd been carrying when he came in, extracting a camera battery and a bottle of Ny-Quil. Two empties rattled to the floor, bleeding green, and he kicked them under the sofa. Mac and Dennis both winced.  
Charlie popped up from the floor behind the table, having replaced the cupcake wrapper, carefully laying it down exactly where it had been before. He steadied himself on the back of the sofa. His speech was slurred. "Like hell that ghost is keepin' me awake tonight! Let the cameras _rrrrroll!_"  
"Well—" Dennis shot a look at Mac. "—they're all set up, Charlie, so let's just replace this battery and get you into bed, mmkay? Big day tomorrow!" A smug look stole over Mac's face, and Dennis pulled him aside. "Dude, your camera angles are still going to be complete shit, and I take no credit for that decision if anything comes of this and we end up on _Oprah_ or something, but do I look like I want to argue with that right now?" He jerked a thumb in Charlie's direction.  
"Oprah's eight million viewers are going to be glad they're getting a good look at some real paranormal activity and not Frank's _balls,_ Dennis, aaaaand Charlie's asleep."  
"Huh?"  
Dennis turned and followed Mac's gaze to where Charlie was slumped on the floor. Frank had pulled out the bed and was sitting on the edge of it, removing his socks, draping one on the edge of an acrid-smelling but mostly empty coffee can.  
" . . . Shit. All right, get him on the bed, I'll get his shoes off. Let's get the cameras rolling and get out of this shithole."  


**x x x**

  
_12:03 AM. Frank sat up in bed. "Charlie!" he hissed. Charlie rolled over, face buried in his pillow, presenting his back to Frank. He showed no signs of waking. "Charlie! Hey, Charlie!"  
12:11 AM. "Chaaaaarlie!" Frank yowled in Charlie's ear._ "Chhhwaaaarrrrrlllyyy!" _Charlie groaned and shuddered, curling in on himself, his face tense but sleeping.  
12:54 AM. Frank held the coffee can a few inches away from Charlie's head, rapping on it with an empty can of cat food. A drop of some liquid flew from the coffee can and landed on Charlie's face. "CHAAAAAARLIE!" Frank moaned, and then he cackled.  
1:27 AM. Frank crawled out of bed, humming a jaunty tune under his breath, and flicked the light switch on, then off, then on, then off, then on, then off . . .  
3:01 AM. Frank knelt on the bed by Charlie's pillow, sliding his sweatpants down off his hips._  
Dennis stopped the tape. "You guys! You guys, look!"  
"C'mon, don't stop it now! You've gotta see this next bit! See, I—"  
"_Shut the hell up, Frank!_" Charlie exploded, jumping out of his chair, clutching the back of it with a white-knuckled grip. "This past, this whole _week,_ all those times I woke up because something was touching me or talking to me, all those, those glasses I broke and swept behind the bar and Dee yelled at me after she stepped on one, this is what you were pulling on me? _I was freaking out!_"  
"I know, I know! That's what made it so damn funny! Come on, Charlie, you just about pissed yourself at that stupid movie, so I thought I'd have a little fun with you. It wasn't even scary! _Midnight Meat Train,_ now that was some scary shit!"  
Charlie lifted the chair over his head.  
"_You guys!_" Mac stood up and held out his hands. He moved between Charlie and Frank, staying out of the potential trajectory of the chair. "Will you both shut up and watch the tape?"  
"I've seen enough, thank you very much!"  
"Charlie, Charlie!" Dennis sounded uncharacteristically rushed and confused, and Charlie finally paused, lowering the chair. "I'm serious! Watch this part again!"  
They did.  
_3:01 AM. Frank knelt on the bed by Charlie's pillow, sliding his sweatpants down off his hips. As he worked on his briefs, he failed to notice the light, plastic rattling sound emanating from under the bed. An empty bottle of NyQuil rolled suddenly across the floor, coming to rest a few feet from the bed, urged on by some unseen force._  
Dennis stopped the tape. He leaned on the television monitor, hand obscuring the exposed Frank, too casual to look casual. He took in the room with a slow sweep of his head. "Well, gentlemen. Looks to me like we've got the real deal."  


**x x x**

  
Seven sentences into _Ghost Lovers: Tales Of Seductions From Beyond The Grave,_ Mac closed the book. After a moment's consideration, he threw it across the room for emphasis. "That—that—_nothing_ about that book was not false advertising! I ought to take that to the publisher!"  
"And who might that be, hmm?" Dennis stooped to pick it up, pausing to admire the cover. "'A Boner Book'? Tell me, Mac, how long did it take the main characters to head for a gay club _this_ time?"  
" . . . First page. Hear me out—"  
"You have got to start taking a glance at these things before you buy them," Dennis said.  
"That is _blatant_ false advertising, bro! You can't call something a 'boner book' when only ten percent of the population is going to get a boner _from_ it! You know, that would never fly in any other industry. When I buy a boner book, I am paying money for a goddamned boner!"  
Dennis was flipping through the book, taking a seat on the sofa next to Mac. The sounds of _Midnight Meat Train_ shrieked into the apartment from the television, long forgotten. It hadn't been as good as Frank had promised. The sound of a butcher knife being plunged into someone's skull briefly drew Mac's attention; he watched the scene apathetically. "See, _Midnight Meat Train,_ that is a homoerotic title. You wouldn't catch me dead with a book called _Midnight Meat Train._ But—"  
"_Ghost Lovers: Tales Of Seductions From Beyond The Grave._ Much classier, Mac, which brings me to my next point. Why exactly did this title catch your eye, again?"  
"Well, I—"  
"Are you _still_ stuck on that whole thing with Charlie's apartment? Come on. It was a fluke!" Dennis's laughter had a desperate edge. It had been two weeks. Sure, the video footage had been inexplicable at first; he had to admit it still was, whatever he said to the contrary, but damned if he wasn't going to try. "It was the wind, or a rat under the bed shoving the bottle out of the way."  
"Dennis, you _saw_ it turn around and roll back the other way half an hour later. I can't believe you're just blowing this off!"  
"So the wind changed direction—Mac, don't you think we would have found _something_ else in the past two weeks if anything were going on in that apartment? We already know all the banging and screaming was just Frank! You saw how he made the 'ectoplasm' too!"  
Mac shuddered, a full-body twitch of revulsion, and declined to comment. Acknowledging Frank's do-it-yourself ectoplasm would only give the memory power, and he'd already experienced one unfortunate night with a chick he'd been planning to bang because of it. "What about the Ouija board?" he said.  
"You mean the Ouija board that spelled 'ghost' G-O-T-E? I'm sure that had absolutely nothing to do with Charlie moving the pointer! God, would you just—would you just tell me why you're so obsessed with the completely ludicrous idea that Charlie and Frank might actually be haunted? Please!"  
There was a long pause. Dennis sat back, crossing his legs, waiting. Mac stared at _Ghost Lovers_ as he collected his thoughts. The naked man on the cover had a pretty sweet tat, he had to admit.  
"I'm thinking it might be Barbara," he said.  
Dennis's reaction was immediate and wordless: a jerky, exaggerated scoff, a scoff he put his whole body into, rolling his eyes and tossing his head.  
"Oh, come on! Dennis, there are things in this world that you can not pretend to—"  
"_My mother?_ My _mother_ is haunting Charlie."  
"No, asshole, Frank! She's haunting Frank! Look, your mom died hating Frank and his entire lifestyle, and now suddenly his shithole apartment is haunted! You're telling me that's a coincidence?"  
"I'm telling you you're retarded! Wait, wait, _wait._ So, one, Barbara is haunting Frank's apartment. And two, your logical reaction to this is to purchase _Sex with Ghosts: a Boner Book._"  
"It, it happened to Anna Nicole Smith," Mac said. He didn't make eye contact. Dennis said nothing. "You can Google it, it's all right there." He withered under Dennis's stare. "Just shut the hell up and put in _Predator_ already," he grumbled.  
"Mm, I don't know, Mac, are you sure you're not in a Patrick Swayze frame of mind this evening?"  
This time the book hit Dennis in the head.  


**x x x**

  
Charlie lit the last candle and got to his feet, making his way over to the door. "Got it! Come on—in . . . "  
Mac let out a low whistle when he stepped into the room. A space had been cleared, as much as was possible, and ringed with stout red candles, all of which were lit and already dripping. The cupcake wrapper was acting as a makeshift candle holder, as were a number of other things—a coaster, a beer can, an actual candle holder which appeared to have been reborn as an ashtray—but it looked as though Charlie had given up on this venture halfway through, and the floor was already sticky with five tiny pools of wax. The overall atmosphere of the room was— "Dude, are you sure this is safe? This place isn't going to go up in flames when one of these candles catches a stray fume, is it?"  
"Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's gonna be some fumes. Uhhhhh, am I underdressed?"  
"What? Oh, this? No! Nooo, don't be—" Mac cut himself off with an awkward laugh, brushing something off of his suit. "Don't be silly." He adjusted his tie.  
"Because, I dunno, I was under the impression that this was a séance, and I didn't know that was something you had to dress up for or bring flowers for."  
Mac shifted nervously, moving to hide the bouquet of red roses behind his back, then cradling them in his arms instead.  
"Well take a seat!" Charlie chirped. He gestured, coming dangerously close to knocking over a candle in the process. "Let's get started! Look, Mac, I really wanna thank you for everything. You know you were the only one who offered to come over tonight? Buddy, you are a true friend. When I told Dennis about it, he told me you were even taking valuable time out of your Patrick Swayze marathon to—"  
"It's an offering!" Mac bristled and shoved the dozen roses into the center of the circle. "It's, it's a sacrifice, get it? To the ghost, so she'll consent to communicate with us on this plane."  
Charlie used a lit candle to reignite one that had gone out, humming to himself. His mood over the past couple of weeks had improved dramatically. Once the videotape had confirmed his fears about the haunting, it was as if the presence of a ghost in his apartment had been assimilated into his worldview as just another part of everyday life, along with everything else about the place. _A man who could live like this has nothing to fear from death,_ Mac thought, shrugging off his jacket and draping it on the sofa. He loosened his tie, dragged a hand through his hair to smooth it back, and turned around to see Charlie holding the candle up to his offering to Barbara. "Hey! Hey, Charlie, what do you think you're doing?"  
"Well, _obviously,_ Mac, if it's a sacrifice, we have to _burn_ it. The smoke will rise into the afterworld and—let go!"  
"You dumb shit, you can't burn something like that in here! You'll burn this whole place down! I signed on to ba—_communicate_ with a ghost, not become one!"  
"Fine! I'm putting it down! Happy now? If this doesn't work because we didn't sacrifice anything, don't come crying to me!"  
Charlie set the candle down in its place in the circle, and something happened. In the silence of the flickering lights, broken only by their breathing and the muffled sound of feline paws scratching at the window, Mac could sense a change in the ambiance of the room. The shadows thrown on the wall by the circle of candles became heavy and black, and he could suddenly feel the warmth of the flames, strangely intimate on his cheeks.  
"I'm gonna pop my shirt off," he said.  
"Dude, what?" Charlie blinked at him with heavy eyelids; the atmosphere seemed to have affected him too. "You can't just strip in the middle of a séance!"  
But Mac was already sliding his shirt off his shoulders. "Come on, you think a glimpse of these bad boys is going to scare her off?" He flexed a bicep, admiring it in the candlelight. "I'd say I'm improving our chances."  
"What makes you so sure this ghost is a woman, anyway? I dunno, man, I've been calling him Steve, I feel like we've been getting to know each other—"  
"I just know, okay?"  
They sat in silence for another long moment, heat thickening the air. Finally they made eye contact. They reached an unspoken agreement that the moment had come. Mac reached over and turned on the tape recorder; it had been Charlie's decision, something he could review later to see what their ears hadn't picked up. They listened as the recorder whirred to life, and, after another brief silence, Charlie began.  
"_Are you out there listening to us, bitch? Did you die here, you pathetic—_"  
"Hey! _Charlie!_" Mac hit STOP on the recorder. "Where the hell did that come from?"  
Charlie rolled his eyes. "I'm making contact with the spirit world! Haven't you ever seen _Ghost Adventures_?"  
" . . . No?"  
"Okay, well, I think Zak Bagans knows a _little_ bit more about contacting spirits than you do, so I say we leave it up to the experts and berate the shit out of this ghost until she shows herself."  
"Berate? I, berate? Where are you getting this? Everyone knows you start off with 'If there are any spirits among us today—'"  
Charlie threw his hands up in the air; the ambiance of the room had been broken entirely, although the air was still chokingly thick. "Maybe that's how old ladies in big hats with silver beads and little moon earrings and bald cats do it, Mac, but Zak Bagans and his team have shown us time and time again that the best way to make spirits interact with you is to make them feel like crap." He suddenly raised his voice. "_Did you kill yourself? Did you take the easy way out in this apartment? Awwww, you crying?_"  
"Charlie!" Mac lunged at him, crushing a couple of rose blossoms under his knee. "Charlie, you do _not_ berate this ghost, do you hear me?"  
"—No?"  
"_No._ Now, we are going to sit down, pour some fine wine, maybe make a little bed of rose petals, and we are going to toast this beautiful, mysterious, experienced, deceased lady with the honor and romance befitting her. Got it?"  
Charlie wiped his eyes on the back of his sleeve; for a confused moment Mac thought he'd made him cry, but his own eyes were puffy with bitter smoke, watering slightly. Whatever fumes had been activated by the candles and the closed window, Mac hoped that banging Barbara one last time would be worth inhaling them. _Maybe she'll let me in the back door. She's a ghost, it's not like it'll hurt her. Right?_  
"We have wine?" Charlie asked.  
Mac shrugged, sheepish. " . . . I left it by the door."  


**x x x**

  
Sam Brewer, eighty-one years old, had smelled some rancid things in his lifetime. Late at night, when he lay awake in bed and came to realize that the two assholes a few doors down had brutalized some new kind of foul meat on their little hot plate yet again, he would compose lists in his head of the top ten worst things he had ever smelled. Eight of them, he'd decided, had been experienced in this apartment building, and this from a war veteran, too.  
Whatever the hot plate assholes were doing tonight had to be at least number two on the list. The hall smelled like piss and incense and smoke, with a cloying floral edge that only brought out the ammonia sharpness of the stench. Sam stumbled out of his room at two in the goddamned morning and made his way down the hall. He passed a bum curled up on the threadbare carpeting and seriously considered burying his nose in the bastard's jacket. The sour-milk-whiskey-ash smell of it would have been a sweet reprieve.  
Sam knocked on the door, making note of the thin billow of smoke that rolled out from under it.  
It was opened by a shirtless, tattooed man, one he didn't recognize, clad in expensive dress pants and carrying a nearly empty glass of red wine. It did not appear to have been his first. Behind him, the younger hot plate asshole was sitting on the floor on a bed of red rose petals, splayed out in the center of a circle of candles, filling two wine glasses. He slammed the glasses down, and a few drops of wine went flying across the room, splashing to the floor less than an inch from one of the lit candles.  
"_Helloooo,_ bitch!" The shirtless man leaned into Sam's face. His winy breath was almost a relief. "What can I do for you, hmm?"  
The hot plate asshole had picked up one of the candles. "Heeeey, Mac! You think this dead lady is into hot wax?"  
He tipped a thin stream of it onto the floor. The smell of scorched carpet fiber and fake cinnamon reached Sam's nose. The door was already closing on him, but Sam caught a glimpse of something in the tattooed man's face before it disappeared; bittersweet remembrance, perhaps, a longing for something lost.  
"She was a classy lady, Charlie, and don't you ever forget that."  
The door clicked shut. Moments later, a thunderous belch sounded from just behind it.  
_Well,_ Sam thought, shuffling back to his apartment—he'd forgotten to put on his other slipper, he realized, his memory was going every day, and wasn't that a bitch—_well, as long as they do it behind closed doors, I'm not one to judge. Hot wax? In my day, the roses and wine were enough for us, and then not until we were married, no sir, but of course this wasn't one of_ those _states, now, was it?_  


**x x x**

  
_He_ felt the pull of smoke and flame and burnt offerings, drawing him out of the walls of _that place_ and concentrating him, distilling him. The paths he'd walked in life pulsed like invisible arteries, pumping what was left of him into the pipe he'd hanged himself from fifteen years ago. It had been weeks since he had mustered the energy to do much of anything. He spent the majority of his time dissipated throughout the body of this apartment like a dormant virus, too beaten down by other energies to present itself to the host. Even observation took a certain presence he simply did not have, not under normal circumstances.  
But the darkness and the belief had drawn him here, now, out of the walls, and he observed. One of the men who had called him back to _this place_ was attempting to pour hot wax onto the other, who flinched away and whined, protesting in words that _he_ had long since ceased to understand.  
All the same, some murmur of recognition rumbled inside of him.  
_What a couple of douchebags,_ he thought, and idly nudged a candy wrapper across the floor and into a garbage bag that was lying on its side. _Man, this place really is a shithole._

**Author's Note:**

> An entry from back in August on my recipient's blog about horror movies and the genre in general gave me the idea for the plot of this, and I took it and ran. I started this story with the notion that it was going to be a Charlie Story; by the end, I realized it was thoroughly a Mac Story and that maybe my favorite character isn't who I'd always thought after all. Mostly, I hope it was as much fun to read as it was to write. Happy Yuletide!


End file.
